Tanzania’s President claimed the coronavirus “cannot sit in the body of Christ.” Israel’s Health Minister dismissed a potential curfew by saying that “the Messiah will come and save us.” A global Muslim missionary movement held mass gatherings - and took blame for spreading the disease.
While most leaders of major religions have supported Governments’ efforts to fight the pandemic by limiting gatherings, a minority of the faithful — in both religious and secular institutions — have not.
Some have insisted that in-person worship should continue because of the relief it can provide. Others have suggested that faith is an authority higher than science, and belief can turn back contagion.
The struggle to adapt religious behaviors to a pandemic that doesn’t distinguish between denominations or national boundaries was especially urgent in its earliest weeks, before many countries fully locked down. But as more officials trace virus hot spots back to faith gatherings, calls have grown louder for the devout to protect each other’s physical well-being first.
“One of the things that most religious faiths stress in the first instance is to care for the most vulnerable in a community, to save others’ lives as a primary focus,” said L Gregory Jones, dean of Duke University’s divinity school.
But for some people of faith — particularly those whose churches, synagogues and mosques are important community centers — that focus appears to conflict with the very fabric of their lives.
The Pakistani Government — accused of moving too slowly to curb gatherings — refused to order mosques closed. Instead, it limited congregants to five or less. Still, some hardliners remained defiant despite advice to stay at home from the country’s Islamic Ideology Council. Maulana Abdul Aziz, a cleric at the Red Mosque in Islamabad, urged the faithful to challenge restrictions, arguing it was a sin to keep mosques empty.
Most US religious services have paused or shifted online as the federal Government discourages group gatherings to help contain the virus. But a few faith leaders and congregants in America, where religious freedom was already a political minefield, have rebelled against those limits and claimed an incursion on their rights.
Others have taken less aggressive steps to assert the power of communal worship, pointing to what they see as the ability of belief to heal the pandemic’s spiritual pain. Retired Catholic moral theologian Janet Smith is among those in her faith urging bishops to support the restoration of the holy sacraments, delivered in person using tactics that wouldn’t flout governmental orders.
Seeking solace in spirituality or relying on religious rituals for relief and protection, some believers across faiths have continued to shrug off coronavirus risks as they worship.
Last month in Iraq, some defied a curfew to observe the anniversary of the death of revered Shiite Imam Moussa al-Kadhim. One of the visitors who have trekked to the imam’s gold-domed shrine complex, Ayoub al-Moussawi, said he has over the years braved threats to perform religious visits.